Despite getting nearly 6 full hours of sleep the night before this flight, it wasn’t near enough the amount that I needed to walk into to the airport with a smile on my face this morning. This journey to Lisbon and back had been a long one so far, and all the jetlag and lack of quality sleep was starting to catch up with me in a big way. I love flying, but nothing would’ve made me happier than sleeping for 15(ish) more hours.

Thankfully I didn’t have to go far to reach the airport this morning, as the Gateway Sheraton is located adjacent to terminal 3 – I needed to go to terminal 1, but it wasn’t a big deal thanks to the very convenient inter-terminal train. I saw a lot of tired-looking faces in that train, confirming that I wasn’t the only one dragging my ass through the airport that morning.

Air Canada Rouge check in counters here at YYZ. I’ve only just arrived and I’m already thinking how dumb it was to split Air Canada Rouge from Air Canada. One airline would make everything so much easier!

Flying to the US from Canada is really convenient in the grand scheme of things. US customs and immigration happens in Canada, so you arrive in the US as if you’re on a domestic flight. I’m a huge fan of getting annoying things over with fast as possible, so clearing US passport control even before walking into the terminal is my kind of thing. The less stuff that I have to do later the better. This is exactly why I am a morning person by the way – normally I hit the ground running as soon as I wake up and tackle as much as I can so that I can enjoy the rest of my day without worry. To be honest though I was having a little bit of hard time hitting the ground running this morning. I could barely even walk.

Inside terminal 1. I think I could have appreciated this a bit more on 6 more hours of sleep…

Many of the gate areas here are equipped with these hybrid seating area / restaurant configurations which are convenient…but slightly annoying in the sense that it eliminates a lot of places to sit around the terminal.

Thinking that a hearty breakfast would do well to help me perk up, I took my place in line at a decent looking café with an extensive menu of craft bagels. It’s pretty hard to screw up a breakfast sandwich in my opinion, but this cafe (who shall remain nameless) did so in spectacular fashion. The bagel itself was cold and stale, the egg and cheese lukewarm, and they smothered it in some kind of “western” sauce which ended up making me gag with each bite as I chewed my way through it. The fact that I paid $13US for it only made it worse.

There it is, folks: I present to you the worst bagel I’ve ever eaten. I’m still gagging thingking about it…

As you can imagine, I wasn’t in a particularly good mood at that point. That disaster of a breakfast combined with the fact that I knew I was facing a five-hour flight in economy class didn’t give me a very good feeling as I was walking down to the gate. At least I had an aisle seat, and I wouldn’t have to pass US passport control again upon arrival in San Diego. That’s something to look forward to, right?

My ride to San Diego!

Flight number 1887 right on time.

My only experience with Air Canada up to this point were two flights back in February 2001. I flew to Toronto and back from San Diego, and all in all they ended up being decently nice flights – though my experience on the ground was less than memorable. But now only Air Canada Rouge flies between these two cities, and I was very much looking forward to getting onboard and seeing what this airline is all about.

For those that don’t know, Air Canada Rouge is a low-cost spin off of Air Canada which serves touristy and vacation-type destinations. I guess San Diego qualifies as “touristy and vacation-type”, but I’ve never really understood the real differences between Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge. They seem to be pretty similar based on the description on their website, and to me the only thing they seem to be doing admirably is diluting their own brand. What’s wrong with having just one airline to do everything?

It’s not very often I get to see this many Air Canada aircraft in one place. One, two, three, four…

I was starting to appreciate this airport a whole lot more once I started waking up. I really like YYZ!

Ok, here we go. The final leg of the journey is ready to board!

Some interesting things to look at while waiting in the jet bridge…

I think the guy in front of me had something to say about how much time this was taking…

Since we don’t seem to be moving, how about a quick pic of our bird?

Thanks for teaching me how to be so patient mom!

Did you know there is a premium cabin on these Rouge A321s? I didn’t know either, but the first four rows of this aircraft were a lot nicer than the one I was heading to way in the back. It’s officially referred to as “Premium Rouge”, btw.

Air Canada Rouge A321 main cabin.

It’s a long walk back to row 40!

There it is. Row 40, seats a, b, and c.

Nice: cool red seatbelts. Not so nice: the lack of decent leg room.

If only my knees could talk. It’s tight back here!

Making things seem even more claustrophobic was the very tall seat backs, which were difficult to look over without sitting bolt-upright.

I had to hold my camera way above my head to get this pic. RIP short people.

Once onboard and in my seat, I honestly couldn’t figure out what makes Air Canada Rouge different from Air Canada. There is indeed a premium cabin on these Rouge planes (called “Premium Rouge”), and the only thing that looked sort of cheap were the seat backs without any video screens. OK, the seat pitch was really tight too, but all in all nothing really screamed “LCC” to me. It really looked like any other mainline flight I’ve been on in the US recently as a matter fact.

Today’s flight was completely full, so there was no chance of me scoring an open window seat for the ride west. The aisle seat was gonna have to do, which was actually quite OK by me since there wouldn’t be any real photography opportunities from the window anyway thanks in large part to the high sun all the way across the country today. Summertime midday sun doesn’t offer much in terms of quality light for good pics unfortunately. My apologies in advance for the lack of views to the outside world from this point forward.

Air Canada Rouge A321 safety card. They really skimped on the illustrations of the people, that’s for sure!

Serious question: do you really think the majority of people will study and understand illustrations on safety cards? That’s a lot of stuff to memorize, and I doubt there would be anyone casually giving this a glance if the plane is on fire and about to explode. It would be every man for himself at that point I’m sure!

Cabin announcements were in French and English, and we were off the gate and on our way right on time despite it feeling like there was a lot of congestion around the airport this morning. I thought for sure we were going to be delayed a little bit, but I checked my watch just after departure and we were exactly right on time.

Kind of wish I had a window seat today. Check out that retro livery on the bird next to us!

Lifting off out of YYZ and feeling great to be headed home. Next stop San Diego!

30 minutes into the flight and I was already having strong flashbacks of my recent Miami to San Diego segment on American Airlines. That flight was nearly the same time of day, I had an aisle seat just like this one, I wasn’t planning on buying any food or drinks, but I had my Podcasts to keep me entertained. Flashback city, man.

I will say that the streaming video content here on Air Canada Rouge is actually pretty good. I was able to connect quickly and easily with my iPad, and a few tests that I did of various movies and TV shows proved that the connection was fast and reliable. I didn’t feel much like watching streaming content though, but it was nice to know that it was there if my Podcasts started to bore me a bit later on in the flight.

Main menu of the Air Canada Rouge streaming entertainment.

Pretty decent selection of TV and movie here – I’m impressed!

Also entertaining was the in-flight menu. Never in my life have I seen a food-for-purchase menu in economy class of this caliber. We’re talking pages and pages of food options, and as far as I could tell (when the flight attendants came down the aisles), every single one of those items were available for purchase today. The only disappointing thing about the in-flight service on today’s flight was that they completely skipped over me for some reason. It’s OK. I get. I’m easy to forget, and besides, I wasn’t all that hungry anyway.

Want to see something interesting? Check this out…

The best menu I’ve ever seen in economy class. Ever! I was half tempted to order one of each just to see if they could pull it off…

Time spent in an aisle seat in the back of a transcon flight isn’t very exciting. Sometimes you have to get up to let the window seat and middle seat passengers out, and other times you have to tuck your elbows in to prevent them from being ripped off by service carts. But if you’re flying Air Canada Rouge like I was today, you also have to squirm in your seat a lot to find a comfortable position which gives your knees a rest from being pressed really hard into the seat in front of you. The struggle is real back here.

Sniping a wing pic while my seatmates are up using the lavatory.

Speaking of the lavatory, this is how Air Canada Rouge rolls.

While I’m up, I might as well get a pic from all the way back. These A321s are long!

A slightly lower perspective. Imagine yourself as a hyperactive 4 year old running up and down the aisle…

Travel isn’t always glamorous folks. This is what 12,000 miles of travel in 4 countries over the course of three days looks like. The look of death right there!

The descent and landing process is equally lackluster from the aisle. There’s nothing to look at except for that big gray seat in front of your face, and you start contemplating stupid things like why they chose that exact shade of gray. Occasionally you can sneak a peek out the windows, but then it gets kind of awkward when you catch the eye of the person sitting in the window seat and you look away quickly for fear of having them think that you were looking at them when you were really not.

Are we there yet?

The landing process is quite boring when in an aisle seat. Nothing to look at but that seat back in front of you.

Thanks for the ride Air Canada Rouge! Perhaps our paths will cross once again someday in the future. Or, perhaps Air Canada will come to their senses and eliminate this secondary brand altogether before I get the chance to try it again…

Back home again in Terminal 2 West. I was pretty much sick and tired of flying by this point. So good to be home!

And this is where my first ever experience on Air Canada Rouge ends. By the end of this flight I still didn’t really understand how this airline differentiates itself from its bigger brother (parent?), as there was really nothing low-cost about this flight other than the fact that the seat pitch was a good inch or two inferior to a mainline aircraft of Delta or American for example. The food-for-purchase and streaming in-flight entertainment is something that is pretty much standard on all mainline carriers these days.

Prices, as far as I can tell, aren’t any cheaper either. I’ve tried pricing out round-trip flights on Rouge from San Diego to Toronto for the past year or so and it was still insanely expensive. So what gives? What is Air Canada’s plan for this niche spinoff? To be honest I really don’t get it, though this was a decently good flight and I would have no hesitation about flying Air Canada Rouge again. I just don’t know why I would choose it over Air Canada if given the choice.

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Thanks for another entertaining review replete with photographic goodness! It’s good to have this afterward to the TAP Air Portugal flight you posted about recently, nicely bringing to a conclusion your recounting of your LIS-YYZ-SAN journey. You couldn’t just get us to Toronto and not finish the story for us! I find your reviews and thoughts interesting, so reading what you post is a pleasure. Notably, I appreciate the nuances of your brand of humor sprinkled liberally throughout.

I don’t particularly get the brand-within-a-brand concept Air Canada has with Rouge. I’m unsure what contractual intricacies they may be navigating with their employee groups, or if Rouge somehow brings value/savings/customers to the company that Air Canada proper does not. It seems to be a mystery if Rouge is successfully adding to Air Canada’s coffers and customer numbers, or if it is cannibalizing the main brand. This sub-brand was initially presented to us as the LCC version of Air Canada on leisure-oriented routes, yet I’d argue SAN is as much a population and business center as it is a tourist draw, not making SAN an obvious choice for Rouge service out of YYZ. Alas, I’m not an accountant privy to Air Canada’s data and I’m sure Air Canada studiously determines which routes get Rouge. I have noticed of late, however, that Rouge is appearing more frequently on routes typically considered more business-oriented, so I’m unsure what’s going on here. I think that Rouge dilutes the Air Canada brand and diminishes it instead of successfully complementing it in terms of branding. Sub-brands can be quite confusing to travelers, and often end up being discarded or reabsorbed into the original brand (MetroJet and US Airways, Delta’s Song and Delta Express, and United’s now-dead Ted). Air France is diluting and obfuscating its brand with Joon and HOP! and who knows what else currently. On a side note, I’m a big fan of that Air Canada Rouge tail livery! The “rouge” lettering that looks done by hand with a giant crayon isn’t so attractive , but that beautiful maple leaf proclaims “We’re Canada!” on the tail.

You mentioned that the wifi was quite good. This is good to know. This is valued by customers, and it’s now an expectation that most have. As cabin crew, complaints about mediocre or poor wifi take up a lot of our time; regrettably, there’s usually nothing we can do about it except hope that the promised technology upgrades are quick to be implemented. Good wifi means peace on board.

I can’t tell if you’re wearing shoes or if you’re in your socks for the lavatory picture. Please tell me you’re wearing shoes in the airplane loo. Ha ha!

I find the photos of the safety information cards you include interesting (how avgeeky is that?!). I like to see if the illustrations are understandable, and I like to see how wording is translated into various languages. You queried how many people study the safety information cards. In my flight attendant experience, I can say that some people can be spotted looking them over on pretty much every flight (these are often the more nervous fliers, and some folks wisely want to inform themselves in the unlikely event the flight is a special kind of bad). Just the other day, I had a very intelligent question from a guest regarding life rafts, their location and deployment, and how this was depicted on the safety information card. Then there’s the occasional passenger who thinks the safety card is the ideal place to stick used chewing gum, so apparently the world isn’t perfect after all.

Thanks again. I appreciate the effort and time you put into your reviews and photographs, and I look forward to more. Happy flighting!

OK, that was probably the best comment I have received on this blog yet. Haha! I really appreciate you taking the time to type all that out, because I know from experience how long it takes to write something of that length. It must’ve taken a while so I really do appreciate it.

I didn’t know that you were a flight attendant! In that case, you probably appreciate my humor a bit more than others do based on your everyday real-world experiences of dealing with the ups and downs of air travel. Lol – I really love flying, but I don’t know if I could do it every day. You must have some real stories to tell!

Anyway, first and foremost, I would like to confirm that yes – I was indeed wearing shoes in the lav for that pic. Haha! I learned that lesson way back in my teenage years, when walking out of the lav wearing just socks and somebody politely informed me that the liquid on the floor wasn’t water. That left an impression on me obviously and I’ve been wearing shoes ever since. Lol!

I’m also glad to see that I’m not the only one who isn’t really sure where Air Canada Rouge fits into the parent brand. As you mentioned, all of the other carrier-within-carrier brands have disappeared over the years, so who knows how long this one will stick around. It’s a good thing I’m not a airline executive, because I really don’t understand this kind of stuff.

Thanks again for the comment and I’m glad to see you enjoying my content. There is lots more to come of course, so I hope you stick around for a while!

I ran across this blog whilst looking for the answer to the question, At what height does this flight travel? The reason for my question is that we were low enough (and the sky was clear often enough) that I enjoyed great views throughout the flight. One can enjoy from the air that spectacular terrain from the Midwest to the region of the Grand Canyon and beyond. The only thing one doesn’t get is a view of the ocean as one arrives, at least not out my righthand (north facing) window seat. Anyway, my point is that, despite the limitations of Rouge comfortwise, this route offers a great view experience, akin to the train ride from London to Edinburgh, or the drive from Calgary to Vancouver. I don’t usually think of air travel in such terms, despite the spectacular vistas one can sometimes enjoy on shorthaul flights, like from Athens to one of the Greek islands, or from Victoria to Vancouver (on a clear day!). I would say this route perhaps offers that opportunity as an experience in and of itself.

Thanks for this thorough and entertaining review. My partner and I are heading to San Diego for business/pleasure in a week and a half and we are flying through Toronto on Rouge so I appreciate your incite. As a Canadian I also share the confusion over the Rouge brand. While I am generally pleased with Air Canada, I usually avoid Rouge when I can. Why pay the same for less legroom and no screen back tv? I must say I am not looking forward to a 5 hour journey in Rouge economy, especially after having already flown 2 hours in the wee hours of the morning to make the connection in Toronto.
Thanks for the review and if you have any recommendations on what to do in San Diego I am all ears!

You’re welcome Dean! I’m glad you found the review helpful – though I hope I didn’t frighten you too much about the torture you have ahead of you. Haha! Seriously though, it’s not a completely terrible experience. Only the leg room was a problem for me, but it’s manageable if you’re able to get up and stretch every now and then. And besides – you’ll have sunny San Diego to look forward to and keep your spirits up!

As far as things to do in San Diego (as a first-timer), I’d recommend a visit to the tip of Point Loma, a ferry ride to Coronado, and of course, plenty of time at the beach! The beaches of Del Mar and La Jolla are my favorite, but for a quieter and more laid back beach experience, I’d head up to Leucadia or Encinitas. The bar at the top of the Grand Hyatt (downtown) is also a neat experience, with panoramic views of SD in every direction. Have a great trip!!

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